How to make git forget about a distant gitignore file?

Question

Git is ignoring a directory that I want to track and index. I do not ignore this dir in any local gitignore file. When I inspect it, I get:

$git check-ignore -v my-ignored-dir
"I:\\path\\to\\external\\project\\.gitignore":33:my-ignored-dir/ my-ignored-dir

So the ignore instruction is coming from this external project file. The file belongs to the external project and I can't modify it. I can't find any reference to this project in my account (searching .bat files etc.).

How can I tell git to stop looking in this external file?

More generally, how does git know where to look for gitignore data and what determines the order of preference?

Answer 1

Thanks for the responses - these lead me to the solution:

$ git config --show-origin core.excludesFile
file:U://.gitconfig     I:\path\to\external\project/.gitignore

So this tells me that the gitignore file from the unwanted external project is defined in a file on my U: drive. I look in this file and find:

[core]
       excludesfile = I:\\path\\to\\external\\project\\.gitignore

Aha! - I worked on this project a couple of years ago. I must've ran some setup script that inserted this line into my personal .gitconfig . I zap the line and all is well...